When a group of European colonists encountered 13 Indigenous people in northern Mexico in 1536, they expected them to flee. Instead, the people walked toward them. Among the Indigenous group were people who looked European, one of them speaking perfect Spanish.
This man—Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca—and three others accompanying him had spent nearly a decade living among Indigenous peoples in the southwestern part of North America. They were survivors of a 600-strong colonial fleet. During their eight-year odyssey, Cabeza de Vaca turned the traditional conquest of the Americas upside down, from one of domination to one of cooperation and exchange.
Colonial expeditions
Cabeza de Vaca (“cow’s head” in English) is a startling and unusual surname in Spanish, yet it is entirely fitting for the life and travels of Spaniard Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. He was born around 1488, a few years before Christopher Columbus first set eyes on what Europeans would call America. The son of a minor noble family, Cabeza de Vaca grew up in Jerez de la Frontera, in southern Spain. Spain’s recent colonial expansion in the Americas filled the nearby port of Cádiz with returning sailors with extraordinary tales of this strange new continent to the west. Later, in his travelogue, La Relación (The Account), Cabeza de Vaca would recount his epic journey.
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Story behind a surname
According to legend, Cabeza de Vaca (cow’s head) owed his unusual surname to a 13th-century ancestor, a shepherd named Martín Alhaja. When Spanish Christians fought Muslim forces to reclaim southern Spain, Alhaja was credited with helping the Christian side win the 1212 Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, in Andalusia. He marked a secret, unguarded pass in the mountains with a cow’s head, enabling King Sancho of Navarre to launch his surprise attack on Muslim forces. To thank him, the king granted the name Cabeza de Vaca upon his descendants.
In his youth, Cabeza de Vaca fought as a soldier in the wars in Italy and Spain. In his 30s, he turned away from military life and looked for an opportunity in the ongoing colonization of the Americas. In 1526 news circulated that a new expedition was being captained by Pánfilo de Narváez—rival of Hernán Cortés, who defeated the Aztecs in the conquest of Mexico.
De Narváez had obtained a grant to conquer territory north of the Gulf of Mexico between modern-day Texas and Florida. He formed a fleet of five ships with 600 men total, appointing Cabeza de Vaca as the expedition’s treasurer, a senior position. The fleet, which also carried enslaved Africans, left Sanlúcar de Barrameda, on Spain’s southern coast, on July 17, 1527.
The expedition was racked with difficulties from the outset. Many sailors deserted, and a storm sank two ships off the southern coast of Cuba. The expedition continued its voyage to Florida, and in the spring of 1528, it finally reached Tampa Bay.
In September de Narváez made a fateful decision to split the expedition in two, encouraged by the promise of food and gold farther north in the Apalachee region. While the remaining ships would continue to search for a safe port, the rest of the men—about 300—would venture into Florida’s interior in search of the promised riches.
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De Narváez and Cabeza de Vaca took the expedition inland into Florida, with 40 men on horseback and the rest on foot. Along the way Cabeza de Vaca said they saw “very large mountains and the trees wonderfully tall,” but when they reached the supposedly rich Apalachee region, they discovered not riches but only clusters of huts.
Dwindling food stores, attacks by the Apalachee people, and decreasing numbers caused de Narváez and his men to return to the coast, but they could not locate their ships. Instead, the party made five flimsy barges. “Of the tails of the horses we made ropes and tackles, and of our shirts, sails,” Cabeza de Vaca wrote. With nearly 50 men on each craft, the barges sat low in the water and were “so crowded, we were almost unable to stir.”
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They skirted the coast to the west until they reached the mouth of the Mississippi. Strong currents dragged the vessels out to sea. De Narváez’s barge was swept away, while the one that Cabeza de Vaca and some 80 companions huddled on finally washed up on an island, where they disembarked. “And as it was then in November and very cold, we were, in appearance, the very image of death,” he recounted.
Observations
“From the place where we landed to this village and land of Apalachee, the country is mostly flat, the soil sandy and firm. Throughout it there are many large trees and ... many large and small lakes, some of them very difficult to cross.” —La Relación y Comentarios by Cabeza de Vaca
Slavery to fame
Cabeza de Vaca named the island the Isle of Misfortune (thought to be today’s Galveston Island in Texas). There, the Europeans experienced complex interactions with Indigenous people. In his Relación, Cabeza de Vaca described great acts of compassion from the inhabitants: They were brought food, despite great scarcity. Hunger and disease swept through, leaving just 15 Spaniards alive. On seeing their plight, the islanders expressed compassion, “and for more than half an hour they wept so loudly and so sincerely that it could be heard far away.” Later, however, he wrote of cruelty endured from other Indigenous islanders and how he and his companions were forced into slavery.
Six years later, in 1534, Cabeza de Vaca and three others managed to escape, including an enslaved African named Esteban de Dorantes. They became itinerant traders, swapping items such as snail shells for hides and flints. “This trade suited me well, for I was at liberty to go where I pleased,” Cabeza de Vaca wrote. “They treated me well, and gave me things to eat ... and sought me out for my fame.”
Part of this fame rested on his reputation as a healer among the Indigenous peoples. In his account, he was uncertain as to whether he genuinely believed he had such power, describing his cures as “reckless and daring.”
For the following two years the quartet, led by Cabeza de Vaca, took a route that headed west across the Sierra Madre, and then down the Pacific coast of modern-day Mexico, in search of the viceroyalty of New Spain. In his Relación, Cabeza de Vaca names over 20 different Indigenous peoples that he encountered, including “the Avavares, with whom we stayed with for eight months.” The Avavares have since been identified as part of the hunter-gatherer Coahuiltecan culture that once inhabited southern Texas.
Having survived on a diet of roots, wild herbs, and fruits, the group had all radically changed in appearance since setting out from Spain. Their hair and beards were long; their near-naked bodies were covered in meager cloths and skins. “Like snakes we shed our hides twice a year,” Cabeza de Vaca later wrote, “and the sun and the air made us look as if we were naked ... We received great pain because of the very heavy loads that we carried.”
In 1536 the travel-hardened group finally made contact with Europeans in northern Mexico. They were the first of many fascinated audiences Cabeza de Vaca and his companions would encounter. Later that summer they arrived in Mexico City and were hailed as celebrities. The following year, Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain and wrote La Relación, chronicling his encounters during his near decade in North America. The book was published in 1542 to enormous acclaim.
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Documented travels
Not only is La Relación an exciting chronicle of Cabeza de Vaca’s survival in the American wilderness, it’s also a valuable record of the peoples living across the American south at that time. Cabeza de Vaca documented more than 20 different Indigenous cultures and recorded in great detail their clothes, rituals, homes, customs, and cuisines.
Few other contemporary accounts of the Americas in this period expressed such sympathy and deep knowledge of Indigenous peoples. Cabeza de Vaca sometimes mocked certain practices as superstitious, but the details of his overall documentation were respectful. He praised the technical abilities he saw, writing, “All the Indians from Florida we encountered were great archers ... They shot their arrows with such force and precision.” He later documented the unique mourning process for children: “Of all the people in the world, they most love their children and treat them best.” Bereaved parents, he wrote, cried “thrice a day, before dawn, at noon and at dusk, followed by the whole tribe, day after day and for an entire year.”
The book reveals that Cabeza de Vaca’s first encounter with the Spaniards near Culiacán, in modern Mexico’s northwest, was not quite a joyous reunion. The Spaniards were engaged in capturing and enslaving Indigenous people. Angered at their actions, Cabeza de Vaca secured promises from his compatriots that the Indigenous people accompanying him would not be mistreated or enslaved.
After we dispatched the Indians in peace, and with thanks for what they had gone through with and for us, the Christians sent us to a certain Alcalde Cerebros. He took us through uninhabited country to prevent our communicating with Indians ... So we went on with the idea of insuring the Liberty of the Indians, and when we believed it to be assured, the opposite took place: the Spaniards had planned to fall upon the Indians ... and that plan they carried out.
Back to the Americas
After some time back in Spain, Cabeza de Vaca felt the pull of the Americas and longed to return. Despite the success of La Relación, he failed to be appointed governor of Florida. The Spanish king and Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, gave the job to conquistador Hernando de Soto instead.
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Cabeza de Vaca languished for three years until he was finally offered a post: the governorship of Río de la Plata, a South American province comprised of parts of modern-day Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
After an arduous journey, Cabeza de Vaca’s expedition arrived at Asunción (today’s capital of Paraguay) in 1542. King Charles’s policy was to expand Spanish conquests deeper into South America. Although Cabeza de Vaca had some success in expeditions to the west of the Paraguay River, he was more inclined to govern people than to conquer them.
He entered into a hostile relationship with his predecessor, Domingo Martínez de Irala. Popular among his fellow colonialists, de Irala stirred up resentment among elites against Cabeza de Vaca, who was charged with professional incompetence. It had been noted that Cabeza de Vaca’s attitude to Indigenous peoples on his expeditions was conciliatory and diplomatic, methods at odds with more militant supremacists in the local military and civil administration.
A special discovery
In 1540 Cabeza de Vaca was appointed governor of the Río de la Plata, the area lying between modern-day Uruguay and Argentina. It took him two years to reach his headquarters at Asunción (today in Paraguay) from Spain. On the way, stumbling across the magnificent Iguazú Falls, his amazement was such that he exclaimed, “Santa Maria!” The river was given that name for a while by European surveyors, but today it is known by its Indigenous name, Iguazú, stemming from the Guarani words y, meaning “water,” and ûasú, meaning “big.” Cabeza de Vaca was the first European to have seen the falls.
In 1545 Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain for trial. He was found guilty of arrogance and incompetence, and later sentenced to exile in North Africa. The harsh sentence was quashed on orders of the king, who granted clemency to the now elderly explorer.
Cabeza de Vaca spent the last years of his life in his native Jerez de la Frontera, dying sometime between 1558 and 1564. In his later years he revised and expanded his Relación into a much more extensive account (La Relación y Comentarios), which included a description of his time in Paraguay.
Cabeza de Vaca’s accounts are still startling for the richness of his observations. As he wrote to Charles V, “I wished to present not merely a report of positions and distances, flora and fauna, but of the customs of the numerous native people I talked with and dwelt among, as well as any other matters I could hear of, or observe.”
(Who were the Aztec, really? It’s complicated.)
